Gefilte fish has it hard. Nobody eats it other than the obligatory slab before the good Passover stuff comes out. Nobody wants to eat an obligatory slab of anything suspended in a jar of cloudy gelatin. Be that as it may, gefilte fish on Passover isn’t going anywhere. So Rosa Mexicano, NYC’s spot for haute south-of-the-border, called upon cuisine culinary advisor Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto) to update it, Waxman uses red snapper in place of …well, whatever goes into traditional gefilte fish. But we’re never above a fresh, all-natural version of something usually packaged.

Swapping the piquant beet-dyed horseradish for homemade habanero sauce completes Waxman’s interpretation of this homestyle Jewish classic. Rosa Mexicano has been doing Mexican Passover for 10 years, after all.